He is in the blockchain space since the very beginning and has acquired substantial knowledge about the space during this time. His knowledge about cyber-security is extensive and we all can learn a lot from his wisdom.

Not wasting much time, let’s hear it out from Fernando Martinho himself.

1. We would love to hear out your story Fernando. Your journey till now and vision for the future.

So I am co-founder at Naoris. We’ve been in blockchain right from 2010. We’ve seen the whole space turning up into ICOs and new cryptocurrencies, moving away from blockchain 1.0 to blockchain 2.0. On our journey we decided to look at cyber security problem and we wanted to change the way in which cybersecurity is taken.

It was in May 2017 when we decided to go ahead. We got a lot of traction and we had discussions with various organisations such as NATO, Armies of some countries, Intelligence agencies, banks, several large and medium organizations.

We at Naoris cover all the cyber-security tech domains. Along with blockchain, we also have other technologies integrated like Swarm AI. All our solution is decentralized and distributed. There’s no weak points, there’s no centralization.

2. Where is Naoris based? Why did you selected that location?

It is based in London – the operations and business. The R&D and development is in Portugal. We want to deploy the solution in every single country of the world. Russia and China don’t trust the software produced in UK, USA. Also, the US and Europe don’t trust the software developed in Russia and China. So the decision was made because Portugal is a small country and does not gets involved in geopolitics much.

3. What is the status of Blockchain in Portugal?

It’s still in early stages but it is more advanced than many other countries. Portugal is quite advanced in many other technologies including Robotics for example with a well-known university winning international competitions.

Portugal is quite advanced in terms of tech and adopting new technology and the government is quite slow in the implementation like in the great majority of countries. One of the reasons why the web summit is done in Portugal is because of the good tech ecosystem.

4. What are your views about the different types of attacks associated with bitcoin?

It is a problem but I don’t think people can mine all the bitcoin, what they can do is the double spending. Double spending is a problem. But that’s pretty much a problem in any proof of work type implementation.

We went with DPOS, our version is probably the most advanced as we’ve innovated a lot. Also, there’s no way to do a 51% attack. Our current limit on the number of block producers is 50.

5. What shortcomings do you see in the blockchain space currently? How can we overcome them?

It depends on the country, some countries are quite ahead like Dubai has a land registry on the blockchain, Estonia is working on it. And there are some countries that are doing it and nobody knows they are doing it. Some projects are quite sensitive. We’re helping some of the nations, talking with them to protect their infrastructure with our solution.

I am actually a bit disappointed at the moment where we are with blockchain. We should have been further ahead because there are not many operational blockchains. There’s Hyperledger from IBM and it’s a private blockchain and some people don’t even call it a blockchain.

I’m disappointed because none of the most spoken blockchains are truly operational. So when I speak with government and top 500 companies they tell me “what can we do with something that’s not operational. So IBM approaches and says we want to do something and hence we go with IBM. They provide us SLAs, they provide everything required from an operational point of view. Tell me which blockchain company provides SLAs? There’s none.”

And that’s what is disappointing that these projects have got a lot of fundingbut they are still not operational. Some are creating an ecosystem of dapps and they have been very slow. IBM saw the opportunity and their ecosystem of dapps is pretty comprehensive. I’m quite disappointed in term of the evolution of blockchain infrastructures.

6. Do you plan an ICO?

So we have a two token strategy. The operational token is really intrinsically connected with the platform. I don’t think that there’s any other technology like ours which, when you buy tech, with our solution, not only you are protecting the environment due to cyber-security but also if you can figuratively be the validator of the ecosystem which people called mining.

Now you are generating tokens that you can use for discounting on our services that you have to pay or you can actually sell those tokens in the open market. So you are protecting yourself with cyber-security but you are generating a return while you are doing it. And that is completely novel. Of course, if you acquire enough number of tokens there are three tiers of block producers that you can become. If you are tier one, then you can become a top block producer.

So we are discussing with a few bitcoin mining companies, a couple of them are from China and soon we are probably going to announce that. One of them will become one of our block producers in that region. We are trying to talk to EOS block producers as well and a few of them are interested as well and because the concept is about validating/mining cyber-security which is completely novel.

So I am gonna make a statement here – “the future of blockchain 3.0 will be these type of solutions like mining cybersecurity, mining marketing, mining healthcare etc.“ So people who understand the sector are creating solutions that they do understand about the sector but also giving value back to that sector and allowing that sector to validate and you can create the concept of sidechains, Merkel-trees or any other blockchain can come as a sidechain as integration. So I think blockchain 3.0 is going to be that, there will still be infrastructure blockchains but I think there’s gonna be an evolution.

7. How can one become a block producer?

So, there are different tiersof block producers. But the overall concept is the number of tokens that one holds and there has to be an agreement with us before you do that because we don’t want to add everyone to be a block producer. We have to make sure that our solution is distributed and we have a certain number of nodes.

There are separate guidelines. But I want to stress that we are different from EOS because validators are the one that is going to be randomly selected so even if you go to the block producers they are signing the blocks that doesn’t compromise the solution because the validators are going to validate the transaction.

8. The recent market crash has caused a lot of panic in the market. What are your views about that?

I have mixed feeling about that. When there was the first crash, I truly believe because quite a few of the projects cashed out. They got crypto and at some point, they converted it into fiat because they needed it to pay salaries, rent etc which unfortunately you cannot pay with crypto yet.

Let’s not forget there were two very big ICOs – telegram and EOS and both of them cashed out an enormous amount of crypto. So recently what we saw is the second stage of that, it is a market reset. The reasons we have to see but some people are saying that an ETF Bitcoin is eminent in the US. So people would want Bitcoin to be as low as possible to get in cheaper. Is anyone manipulating the market to push it down? I don’t know, could be. Some people also panicked and decided to cash out.

9. Any last words of motivation for the blockchain audience?

Keep believing because it is not about cryptocurrency, it’s the techwhich is going to change the way we interact with each other, the way we do business and be creative. Look at the problem you want to solve, go back to basics, define what the characteristics you need from the technology on the problem and then see if blockchain can help you with that.

Most of the problems that I see can be solved using a combination of technology – Blockchain, Swarm AI and a few others. So abstract yourself from Crypto. Crypto is gonna continue I have no doubt but Blockchain per se is an evolution of tech I say it the evolution of the Internet. I truly believe the next generationof the Internet would be blockchain